ROME, Dec 5 (Reuters) – The Olympic flame flared into new life under a cloudy sky in the square of Italy’s presidential palace on Friday before starting its journey across the country ahead of the 2026 Winter Games.
A torch, ignited last month in ancient Olympia, the Greek birthplace of the ancient Games, was handed over in Athens to Italian organisers earlier this week.
That lit a lantern brought to the Quirinale Palace on Thursday evening and put on display in the Sala delle Vetrate, the palace’s ceremonial hall.
That in turn lit a torch which Italian President Sergio Mattarella used to ignite the flame in a ceremonial cauldron in Piazza del Quirinale during an event attended by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry.
“The Olympics are ancient and modern history. They are also the present day. And now more than ever we feel the need for friendship and peace among peoples,” Mattarella said, calling for the Olympic truce to be renewed.
“In fact, we hope even more that the remaining months will bring detente and dialogue, stop aggression and barbarism, and extinguish the desire for power that brings fear, death and devastation,” he added.
Hundreds of tourists gathered in the square, perched on one of Rome’s seven hills and overlooked by the 16th-century Quirinale Palace, which served as a papal and royal residence before becoming the home of Italy’s head of state in 1946.
Crowds craned their necks as Italy’s Frecce Tricolori aerobatics team streaked across the Rome sky in a flypast trailing the colours of the national flag.
“The Olympic flame arrives in a nation that lives and breathes sport,” IOC’s Coventry said, adding in Italian: “Bella Italia”.
The Games will be co-hosted by Milan and the Dolomite resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo from February 6 to 22.
Italy, a winter sports powerhouse, last hosted the Winter Olympics in 2006 in Turin.
The flame will leave Rome’s Stadio dei Marmi on December 6 for a 12,000-km relay through Italy’s 20 regions, 110 provinces and 60 cities, carried by 10,001 bearers.
“Each torchbearer will carry with them a piece of the Italian spirit, your creativity, your courage, your cultural heritage, your joy and your passion for life,” Coventry, a former Zimbabwean Olympic medal-winning swimmer said.
(Reporting by Antonio Denti and Giselda Vagnoni; Editing by Kate Mayberry and Andrew Heavens)
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